Concerns about China\u2019s involvement in the port sector were also waved away.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe are developing several other ports and expanding Colombo port,\u201d said Prof Gamini Lakshman Peiris, Sri Lanka\u2019s Minister of External Affairs, after a speech in Bangkok.<\/p>\n
Moving to quash concerns about Beijing\u2019s involvement in the sector – Chinese money built the new facility at Hambantota – Mr Peiris said: \u201cThere is no exclusivity. China is not the only player.\u201d<\/p>\n
Mr Peiris pointed out Indian money was being used to develop ports elsewhere on the Indian Ocean island, which is planning to turn itself into a maritime trade hub.<\/p>\n
\u201cIndia is developing ports in Tricomalee,\u201d he said, adding that “the Indians are helping us” in KKS (Kankesanthurai) port.<\/p>\n
He explained to Port Strategy<\/em> that India\u2019s involvement was government-to-government rather than private sector. \u201cThey are mainly loans at concessionary rates,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n One point Mr Peiris stressed in his speech was that the military defeat of the Tamil Tigers, the armed wing of a separatist movement based in the North and East of the country, had paved the way for economic development and the security of the seas around Sri Lanka.<\/p>\n There is, he said, \u201ca total sense of tranquility with regard to maritime operations”.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Sri Lanka is to press on with further port development following what a top government official described as the striking development of ships at the just-opened Hambantota port.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":1699,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[],"sponsor":[],"class_list":["post-1698","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-asia"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/greenport-congress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1698","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/greenport-congress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/greenport-congress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/greenport-congress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/greenport-congress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1698"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/greenport-congress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1698\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1700,"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/greenport-congress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1698\/revisions\/1700"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/greenport-congress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1699"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/greenport-congress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1698"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/greenport-congress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1698"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/greenport-congress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1698"},{"taxonomy":"sponsor","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portstrategy.com\/greenport-congress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/sponsor?post=1698"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}